Magnesium reaction with ketones

The initial complexation of magnesium species with ketone could be demonstrated by measuring the rate constants of reactions of methylmagnesium bromide with mixtures of pinacolone and magnesium bromide the reaetion followed second-order law ... 

Grignard reagents undergo a general and very useful reaction with ketones. Methyl-magnesium bromide, for example, reacts with cyclohexanone to yield a product with the formula C7H14O. What is the structure of this product if it has an IR absorption at 3400 cm" (See Section 17.6.)... 

We see from these examples that many of the carbon nucleophiles we encountered in Chapter 10 are also nucleophiles toward aldehydes and ketones (cf. Reactions 10-104-10-108 and 10-110). As we saw in Chapter 10, the initial products in many of these cases can be converted by relatively simple procedures (hydrolysis, reduction, decarboxylation, etc.) to various other products. In the reaction with terminal acetylenes, sodium acetylides are the most common reagents (when they are used, the reaction is often called the Nef reaction), but lithium, magnesium, and other metallic acetylides have also been used. A particularly convenient reagent is lithium acetylide-ethylenediamine complex, a stable, free-flowing powder that is commercially available. Alternatively, the substrate may be treated with the alkyne itself in the presence of a base, so that the acetylide is generated in situ. This procedure is called the Favorskii reaction, not to be confused with the Favorskii rearrangement (18-7). ... 

The Grignard reagents prepared from the activated magnesium appear to react normally with electrophiles. Thus reactions with proton donors, ketones, and carbon dioxide afford hydrocarbons, alcohols, and carboxylic acids, respectively. The reductive coupling of ketones to pinacols had also been accomplished with the activated magnesium. ... 

House and Trafkante suggested that magnesium alkoxides promote deprotonation of ketones in the reaction with Grignard reagents leading to by-products. See Reference 18(a). 

A propoxyphene-like analgesic which obeys the empirical morphine rule is pyrroliphene (101). A Mannich reaction involving pyrrolidine, formaldehyde and propiophenone gave amino ketone 99, which was converted to tertiary carbinol 100 by reaction with benzyl magnesium chloride reaction with acetyl... 

Precursors for this task were obtained by addition of /-butylmagnesium bromide to the central bond of [1.1.1 ]propellane 40a followed by conversion of the 3-f-butylbicyclo[ 1.1.1 Jpentyl-1 -y 1-magnesium bromide (88) into the ketones 89 by standard methods.27 Reaction of ketones 89 with tosyl hydrazide afforded the hydrazones 90, which gave the corresponding lithium salts 91 by reaction with MeLi in ether. These salts were dried under high vacuum and then pyrolized at 4 x 10 5 torr in the temperature range of 100-130°C and the volatile products condensed in a liquid nitrogen-cooled trap. 

The addition of carbonyl compounds towards lithiated 1-siloxy-substituted allenes does not proceed in the manner described above for alkoxyallenes. Tius and co-work-ers found that treatment of 1-siloxy-substituted allene 67 with tert-butyllithium and subsequent addition of aldehydes or ketones led to the formation of ,/i-unsaturated acyl silanes 70 (Scheme 8.19) [66]. This simple and convenient method starts with the usual lithiation of allene 67 at C-l but is followed by a migration of the silyl group from oxygen to C-l, thus forming the lithium enolate 69, which finally adds to the carbonyl species. Transmetalation of the lithiated intermediate 69 to the corresponding zinc enolate provided better access to acylsilanes derived from enolizable aldehydes. For reactions of 69 with ketones, transmetalation to a magnesium species seems to afford optimal results. 

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